


Hold On, Hold On

by AndreaLyn



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-15
Updated: 2014-03-15
Packaged: 2018-01-15 18:24:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1314757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Pike scraped McCoy from the bottle of the barrel, there was little place for him to go but lower. He just didn't plan to live that 'lower' on a pirate's ship to save Pike's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold On, Hold On

The storm above is brewing, whipping sails from their comfortable resting place and pressing a deep foreboding sensation in the hearts of veteran sailors and skilled men at sea. Doctor McCoy stands in the midst of the deck of hustling sailors, pushing him out of the way as they pull their ropes and prepare for the storm.  
  
It’s not the weather that worries him. Leonard McCoy, the old Sawbones for the good ship  _Enterprise_ , has been more worried about the threat that’s been chasing them since they took their precious cargo aboard. The storage room is bustling with treasure and it’s almost as if the pirates have caught the scent, trailing them since Antigua.   
  
The winds of the storm have given them an advantage and McCoy knows that it’s only a matter of time now before they’re intercepted by the legendary and loathsome Captain Kirk. The man’s had a quarrel with Pike for years now, ever since Kirk was an honest man labouring to become a lieutenant in the Navy.   
  
He failed to pass the midshipman test that Pike put all men through – or at least, those he took on from the Nassau port. The test, designed by First Lieutenant Spock (a man that McCoy has never truly liked, but good at his job), has one simple rule: no one ever wins. Kirk never forgave Pike for that, even if he never  _met_  the man who had ordered that Kirk be subjected to an impossible test of skill. All he knew was that Pike gave Spock a task and Spock had been the cause of Kirk’s failure – even if it was a failure shared by all young midshipmen. Kirk just didn’t take it as well as other people.   
  
McCoy is shoved the side as young midshipman Chekov goes sprinting across the deck. “Sorry, Doctor! Very sorry!” is shouted back at him in quick apology as he hurries to help grasp the wheel of the ship and steady her before she goes lilting all a-starboard and pushing everyone off their balance. McCoy hates the sea as it is. There’s always a storm brewing and some new possible reef to steer into and while they’ve a top-notch crew, the danger is always out there.  
  
Pike tries to settle McCoy every time he starts to harp about the peril they’re constantly in, but it doesn’t stop him from taking leave of his lunch every so often. The crew have even marked a spot on the port side of the ship as  _his_.   
  
McCoy just isn’t made to be a seafaring surgeon. He’s there because Pike saved his life and dragged him out of his own filth in a pirate’s bar, dousing him with water until he could cite his alphabet both forwards and back and could operate with a steady hand. “Boyce,” Pike had said at the time, “is suffering from scurvy because a doctor is the worst kind of patient. I need a replacement.”   
  
McCoy, with his dead father and his extremely disappointed former wife, had nowhere else to go. McCoy’s father warms his grave and Jocelyn warms the bed of another men. McCoy himself? He keeps a heavy sense of ill-ease warm each day.  
  
So here he is on a ship and facing down two oncoming storms, both threatening to rip the ship apart and render them to pieces. Kirk doesn’t like to kill, but he does love to take prisoners. Half of his current crew used to serve the Navy or have relatives that are still on their tours of duty. McCoy isn’t sure what he’s hoping for – the storm or the takeover.  
  
He clenches the vial in his hand a little tighter and turns to look over his shoulder to watch the men change the sails so they won’t rip in the gale winds. They only have hours at this rate and if McCoy doesn’t act quickly, then Kirk is going to have Pike at his disposal. Not only will that give him enough funds to bankroll his pillaging of the colonies, but it will give him too high a price in leverage.  
  
“Midshipman Chekov!” he barks over the sound of the howling wind, advancing on the wheel of the ship.   
  
“Yes, Doctor?”  
  
“When’s dinner with the Captain?”  
  
“Is same time as always!” Chekov shouts back, bracing his foot on the thick oak of the wheel and helping Riley to brace the heavy helm. Chekov and Montgomery Scott are constant faces at the captain’s table. Spock would be there, but Spock has gone ahead to secure the site where they will inevitably hold their treasure.   
  
McCoy takes a deep breath to steady his nerves and it’s a testament to the dismal nature of his plan and the bleak outcomes it presents that he’s fixated only on what he plans to do and the ramifications instead of the swell of the waves and the sound they make as they pound against the hull of the ship. If all goes to plan, he won’t have to worry about sleeping in his hammock this evening. He’ll be too busy fending off Kirk’s dogs and he’s not sure which the cheerier prospect is of the two.  
  
Either way, it’s going to be a very long evening.   
  
He turns and begins his unsteady approach to the Captain’s dining quarters, shutting both doors behind him and bracing himself on the ivory handles, turning in order to exhale deeply, the vial of sedative tucked safely in the pocket of his breeches.  
  
“Sawbones, the last time I saw anything that green, it was the look on Barnett’s face when we received the commission to retrieve the treasure.” Pike, damn the man, sounds terribly amused with McCoy’s current predicament.   
  
McCoy turns and grimaces when he sees the food the cook’s sent up, the smell only doing worse to convince him to simply allow his stomach contents to come back up. “You know I hate that damn nickname.”  
  
“But I like it,” is Pike’s calm and wry remark. He switches pepper and salt cellars on the table when the sea shifts them about and McCoy insists on focusing his gaze on the items instead of thinking of the lurch of the floor beneath him or the ill-blown wind that haunts his back and tells him that death may be knocking on their door soon enough. “Pour us drinks,” he insists. “Scotty and Chekov will be here soon enough and there’s no time like the present to celebrate.”  
  
McCoy sways as he tends to Pike’s personal bar. It’s carved in ancient oak and has been in his family for generations. Why the blasted idiot would pick it up and place it on a ship that could sink at any time is beyond him. But what’s he to know? He cuts and sews and mends. He’s not a sailor and he certainly doesn’t have the sense of one – thank god.  
  
He pours two glasses of crimson wine and slides his body tight against the bar, pulling the sedative from out of its hiding spot, uncapping it easily and tapping every last drop into Pike’s cup.   
  
If he does this, he will have to accept the consequences. There will be no turning back and for a man that’s prided his life on never having to stay too close to tragic events, that’s something that he barely knows how to cope with.  
  
He refuses to let Kirk have at Pike.   
  
He turns and plasters a smile on his face as if to combat the seasickness that he will never get over. Carefully, he keeps the untainted glass close to his torso and extends the other to Pike. “Here, drink this. As your doctor, I can promise it ought to take any residual nerves off.”  
  
“Nerves,” Pike denounces with a scoff. “Ha! Was King Arthur nervous as he pulled out the grail? Was Caesar nervous when he inherited his kingdom?”  
  
“I think the ides of March beg to differ,  _Captain_ ,” McCoy says in reply, sarcasm overruling his words heavily. He extends the poisoned glass once more and nearly breathes in relief when Pike takes it from him. “Drink the damn wine, Christopher and don’t make me tuck you into bed tonight when you can’t sleep from all the goddamn nerves.”  
  
“Where did I find you, McCoy?” Pike wonders.   
  
“You found me at the bottom of a barrel. You were just lucky you were strong enough to scrape me out.” McCoy takes another deep breath to try and quell his conscience – which hasn’t yet stopped pitching a fit about his actions and what he’s chosen to do here.   
  
Captain Pike lifts his glass of deep red wine in the air. The ship rocks the plates to and fro, giving them life of their own as the salt and pepper containers stumble and fall – spilled salt, McCoy’s mother had always warned him as a child, offering ill portents for all those not willing to do right by it. No one takes a handful to toss over their shoulder. McCoy is far more concerned with the traces of liquid he’s slipped into the Captain’s wine.  
  
With the pirate ship Riverside within fair grasp, there’s no telling when they’ll be boarded, but it is inevitable and is one that McCoy has been preparing for since he heard tell that the dread Captain Kirk was back in the Caribbean and had set his sights on the  _Enterprise_. He was rumoured to be returning from finding the fountain of youth, a stupid myth that McCoy scoffs at and demeans the young boys of the ship for believing.  
  
“To defeating the pirates and surviving the storm,” Pike announces, lifting his glass high. The light catches the glint of metal adorning goblets given to them by the governor of Jamaica on their last trip south, a gift of thanks in turn for McCoy’s deft work curing the plague that threatened to topple their population. Pike sets his glass down on the table, but the sway of the sea knocks it over and McCoy is too busy to stop the spill.  
  
“To surviving the storm,” McCoy is keen enough to agree, setting his own glass down on the table and stepping forward until he’s but inches from Pike, arms out and ready.   
  
Pike looks at him warily. “What on earth, Leonard...”  
  
Then he sways and realization hits.  
  
“I’m sorry,” McCoy insists sharply, sliding his arm around Pike’s waist and leaning in. He feels the flush of heat from Pike’s body underneath the stiff and unforgiving clothes that he wears without a single wrinkle. Pike seems to fight every inch of the way down and McCoy goes with him, to his knees before he goes to the floor, the Captain still in his arms. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“Captain! We’re ready for our distractions in the form of food and good conversation!” comes Scotty’s voice at the door.   
  
“Aye, and I have brought vodka. There is never sense in enduring a storm without vodka. Is an old Russian proverb,” Chekov adds knowingly.  
  
“If you two know what’s good for you, you’ll go away,” McCoy warns as he struggles to make up for the ground he’s lost. With his arms braced around Pike’s waist, he starts hauling him up to a chair. There are plates of food at the table ready to be eaten, there are glasses of wine, and there are even lit candles, which McCoy has been busy snuffing out as he attempts ten other tasks at once – but the last thing he needs is for the captain’s chambers to burn down along with the ship. It’s a  _perfect_  dinner scene.  
  
Or it would be if Pike hadn’t been tied to a chair by handy linen napkins in sturdy sailor’s knots. He’s searching for rope under pillows and in containers and is hauling it out when the doors burst open and Scotty and Chekov enter in their dining finest.  
  
“Close the goddamn door,” McCoy snaps, shifting the rope until it’s draped over his forearm. “And help me tie him up.”  
  
It’s almost a testament to their trust of him that there is no further questioning. Scotty is the first to step forward and grasps the other end of the rope. For a brief moment, McCoy expects mutiny. He thinks that he’ll be knocked to the ground and hogtied, but it seems that he’s at least earned trust enough.   
  
Scotty doesn’t look very pleased to be doing the devil’s work in the form of tying the Captain up. “The Captain is gonnah kill yeh when he wakes,” is Scotty’s argument, an echo of the expression on his face. He finishes with the knots and steps away, looking absolutely flushed with shock and fury. McCoy pinches the bridge of his nose before moving his fingers to rub at his temple, wondering why Scotty and Chekov couldn’t have left the room when McCoy had told them they had no business there.  
  
They’re accomplices now, which suits McCoy just fine, but he doubts that either of the men will see it that way. It’s their damn loyalty to Pike. It could get them killed if they keep this up with the Riverside approaching by the minute. They’re running out of time and McCoy will be damned if he’s gone this far only to fail.   
  
Hell, it’s his own damn loyalty to Pike that got him into this mess in the first place.   
  
“Hopefully he won’t wake up until after the pirates have boarded us,” McCoy says, taking a deep breath to steady himself. Between the storm and being caught in the act, his stomach is trying to make a glorious sprint for the exits and considering he doesn’t have much time, he needs to calm himself. He crosses his arms over his torso and keeps his gaze on Pike. “You do realize that this is the only way. First mate Spock is at least two days ahead of us with the captured Spanish Galleon, there is no way we could possibly signal for help.”  
  
“But vhy,” Chekov announces, his accent growing more pronounced under stressful situations, “are you doing zis, Doctor? We can find someone else to...”  
  
“No.” McCoy at least thanks his lucky stars that the two men in the room with him are intelligent beyond any social norms and that they’ve cobbled onto the plan quickly enough. “I mean nothing to the Navy. My capture will hold no leverage. Besides,” he adds, gruff as ever, but something softening in his tone, “I’m repaying a debt to Pike.” He turns to the other two men, ready to take the next and final step of this plan. “Now, find me a spare Captain’s uniform. And inform the crew that  _I’m_  Captain Pike as far as they’re concerned. I don’t need a goddamn midshipman or idiot lieutenant ruining this when Kirk and his heathens board the ship.”  
  
Scotty and Chekov stand there as if frozen by fear. Fear is what’s coming. Fear is if the storm tips them over and sinks them to the bottom of the ocean or if the musket-shots of the pirates cut through their skin like they’re made of nothing more than butter. Fear is the future.  
  
“Go!” McCoy commands, sharper than before as he begins to loosen his cravat one-handed, trying to pull at it in order to  _breathe_. Vest stripped and hung upon a chair, McCoy leans forward with both hands on it. Everything creaks as the sea pitches to and fro and he stares at Pike and prays to God that he is doing the right thing.  
  
“I’m sorry, Christopher,” he apologizes once more when Scotty and Chekov have both vanished to find the trinkets of duplicity they’ll need. “You have to trust me.”  
  
By God, he’d best do right by the Captain.  
  
*  
  
He somehow manages to conquer his nerves and makes it to dawn. The sea has calmed enough for the sails to be unfurled and for the midshipmen to begin their attempts to catch the breeze and bring them closer to the treasure Spock is protecting. In the light of day, McCoy can almost allow himself to feel hope. Coming off a sleepless night, he clasps the banister with five tight fingers and tries to keep his eyes on the immediate sea and not the haze in the distance, promising a murky and humid day.  
  
“Chekov, any news?” he asks of the man beside him.   
  
Chekov is busy peering out a spyglass to all sides of the horizon, keeping watch for the  _Riverside_. Scotty is off below, trying to convince the boys to take the oars out and get them moving faster until the storm-winds pick up, but he knows it’s an argument already lost. With Pike out of commission, the men are barely accepting this charade, but asking more favors of them is like asking a leopard to change its constant spots.   
  
“Sir...”  
  
McCoy’s stomach tenses at the foreboding tone. Chekov extends the spyglass to him and he takes it into hand, adjusting the focus and balancing it with both hands. In the distance, just barely visible, there is the hint of a dark flag coming free from the clouds.   
  
They’re familiar colors.   
  
“Damn it,” McCoy curses heavily, wanting to spit over his shoulder just for luck that he needs. “Kirk isn’t even running false colors.” It speaks of a heavy over-confidence. They don’t even think they need deception to overtake the ship. They’re just going to do it. He thrusts the spyglass back into Chekov’s hands and starts descending the stairs, his rapier clanking against the wooden steps as he goes. “Contact spotted!” he bellows the warning up to the crow’s nest, then to the rest of the deck. “The  _Riverside_  is coming.” He hurries to the port side of ship, leaning over. “Arm the cannons, boys!” A quick step to starboard with the same warning and that’s about all he can manage to think of in preparation.   
  
He’s out of breath by the time he makes it back up to the mast and Chekov’s side, hand to his breastbone to encourage breaths.  
  
“Sir, you are nervous,” Chekov says with a quiet smirk.  
  
“I just may throw up on you yet, Chekov,” McCoy warns, as steady as he can be. Every second seems to bring the Riverside closer than before and he’s not ready for this at all. The last time he fought had been when his ex-wife’s new man issued him a duel.   
  
He hadn’t even won that particular battle.  
  
He swallows the ever threatening lump in his throat and glances to the side to see Chekov withdrawing the two short and sharp knives he keeps on his person.  
  
“I will defend you with my life,” Chekov insists very seriously as the winds change against their favour and spell their doom for them. What might have given them hours to dream up some fanciful tactic (like running a reef and mooring them both on shallow shoals) is now out of the question.  
  
McCoy can only pray that their cannons aim true and that the men aboard the ship are as good in combat as Pike has sworn they are.   
  
As the  _Riverside_  cuts closer, McCoy can make out one figure standing at the bow of the ship. He’s clad in a dark crimson-burnt coloured coat and is...waving? His hair is gold and shines in the slowly-rising sun and his chest is puffed out, waving with a leisurely air, pointing with two fingers at McCoy.   
  
“Hold steady,” McCoy orders warily, seeing the pirate-ship ready her ropes and guns, cannons smaller but seemingly amended in some unfathomed way that the Navy would never sanction.   
  
With every second that passes, McCoy feels his heart stutter and start even as he tries to school it into a sluggish rhythm. He sees Kirk eyeing the ship, but primarily him. It’s as though his eyes won’t stray from McCoy’s form, like he’s already decided that while the treasure in the hold of the ship is important, he wants to go above and beyond and capture the supposed Captain Pike in the process.  
  
McCoy can only pray that Pike is still unconscious where he rests, the sedative taking its time to wear off.   
  
He grabs hold of the railing when the pirate ship’s bow rams hard against his. “Fire!” he orders wildly, seeing Kirk grasp hold of one of the ropes, clearly intending to bridge the gap between the two ships. The ocean is choppy beneath them, the storm still on its way. If they linger too long, they’ll both have their ships condemned to the bottom of the sea, but with the smoke from the cannons clouding the sky and the cacophony of noise clashing all around his ears, McCoy doesn’t give a damn about whatever the meteorological gods have in store for him.  
  
Kirk is grabbing hold of the rope and giving a gesture that seems to insist that his crew stay put. He eases back and with all the strength that he possesses (which McCoy has heard his fair share of stories about), crosses easily and lands beside him.   
  
McCoy hears the tell-tale sound of a sword being unsheathed and as neither he nor Kirk have made a move for their weapons, knows that it can only be one person. “Chekov,” McCoy warns, not taking his eyes off of Kirk and merely allowing for a stern glance-askance. “This is my fight.”  
  
Chekov’s upper lip curls in what appears to be frustrated disgust and he seems to be concocting a mishmash of words to argue.   
  
“Go!” McCoy spits out before Chekov can  _say_  anything that will take away from all of McCoy’s careful (and panicked) plans. Chekov hesitates yet another moment, but inevitably takes to McCoy’s orders and takes his drawn weapon to the fight beginning on the lower portion of the deck as Kirk’s men and women begin to lay down planks to cross over the shaky divide.   
  
With the two of them left alone, Kirk doesn’t hesitate. He strikes forward like a snake, darting and quick, grabbing McCoy by the shirt and shoving him back against the mizzen, McCoy’s head sharply hitting the thick wood and distracting his body from feeling the panic of whatever impending situation is upon them. Kirk strides forward as if suddenly uncoiled and grasps him by the cravat. “Why, hello there Captain Pike,” Kirk breathes out, enjoying this cat-and-mouse game. His hips slide forward and his body follows as he pins McCoy in even tighter than before, angling his now-drawn rapier against McCoy’s neck so that one false move will put him in peril. “Nice to finally make your acquaintance.”  
  
“Go to hell, Kirk,” McCoy snaps, not caring about the new cut that forms when sticking his neck out to insult Kirk earns him another sharp groove against stubbled skin.   
  
“Tsk,” Kirk sighs and smirks even brighter than before. “Is that anyway to speak to your captor?” he wonders with a lascivious grin.   
  
McCoy’s fingers tighten and loosen around the hilt of his own sword and as he draws it out, it’s not the sharp-end that he intends to strike Kirk with, but rather the hilt. Angling it awkwardly, using his elbow to dispel Kirk’s hold on him, he sends the man staggering back just long enough for McCoy to sucker-punch Kirk with the rapier’s hilt grasped tightly in hand.  
  
He may not have won the fight against his ex-wife’s new man, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t get in a good number of dirty tactics before he lost.   
  
Kirk smirks as he raises his free hand to the now-bleeding portion of his scalp. McCoy knows exactly how many stitches it will take to seal off the wound and it leaves him with a personal sense of pride. He may lose this fight, but Kirk won’t get his hands on Pike and he’s not going to walk away unmarred.   
  
“You fight dirty, Pike,” Kirk remarks, sounding like he approves terribly. “I love it. You’ll be able to manage when you’re on my boat.”   
  
His balance shifted, McCoy steps one foot back to offer the blade to Kirk, intending to fight him to the death if necessary. All around them, Kirk’s crew are fighting their own battles against the Navy men and McCoy knows that if the fighting is to continue, there will be deaths. There will be injuries that he can’t patch because he’s too busy playing pretend.   
  
“What I said before,” McCoy grunts out as he parries forward to Kirk’s easy defense, the clash of their thin blades causing a high-pitched sound in the air. “Still applies. Go to hell, Kirk.”  
  
“Not without some company,” Kirk challenges, a manic smile on his face, but the gleam in his eyes deadly serious. He pushes against the impasse of their blades and forces McCoy to double his efforts in staving Kirk off. “Do you hear that? All around you, Pike, that’s my ship’s crew besting yours.”   
  
A swift cut striking upwards from Kirk’s blade and McCoy is bleeding from his arm, Kirk slicing through both the old captain’s coat and through McCoy’s skin. The sharp sting of sea-air on the wound bites for a moment, but fades easily enough and McCoy strikes forward with less purpose and the intention of merely leaving marks – cuts shallow enough to scar – and managing a cut at Kirk’s thigh and his forearm.   
  
Kirk stumbles backwards when the sea sends them reeling with an unexpected roll of a wave, but he recovers faster than McCoy does as they both take the opportunity to catch their breath. He surges forward and grasps hold of McCoy by the cravat once more, lips barely more than inches away from McCoy’s and noses almost bumping.   
  
“Order it,” Kirk demands out of nowhere, though McCoy knows exactly what he means. The sounds of fighting are diminished and the cries of ‘got him, Captain!’ from the opposite side mean that the Navy is being defeated and their fates lie in Kirk’s hands.  
  
“Put your arms down,” McCoy calls down to those remaining fighters on the ship, swallowing the pride that he had entered the fight with. “Cease cannon fire!” With his orders communicated, the surrounding air is chilly and silent, the sea crashing against the ships and the sky rumbling above them. “What do you want, Kirk?”  
  
“You.”  
  
“Well, that’s real ambitious, but I got a pretty girl back home who already holds that claim and maybe a boy, too,” McCoy says, his sarcasm not dwindling in the face of danger. If anything, he finds that cutting jokes is helping to keep him going.   
  
Kirk seems to appreciate the effort. “Funny. We’ll be taking a meeting in your cabin. After you, Pike.”  
  
McCoy doesn’t like the idea of taking the first steps with Kirk at his back, but he isn’t willing to stake the crew’s life on a gambit that won’t pay off. He takes a deep breath and turns, feeling the pinch and the point of Kirk’s rapier pressed against his spine, one slash away from rendering him useless.  
  
“Walk, Pike,” Kirk says quietly, a threat in the words.   
  
McCoy draws open the door and takes a deep breath as he enters the lion’s den. Kirk wastes little time in spinning him around and shoving him down into a chair. His cuts and wounds bleed sluggishly and sting, but McCoy pays them little mind as Kirk kneels down between McCoy’s legs and knots a strong box-knot at the wrists and ankles, the rope burning at McCoy’s wrists as he moves his hands to test the tension.   
  
Kirk never once takes his eyes off of McCoy as he drags a chair over slowly, setting it backwards and perching down on it, studying McCoy with such intense curiosity and delight that McCoy feels almost compelled to spit at him and disturb this pretty little picture.   
  
“Well? This leaves only one thing I want.”  
  
“And what’s that?” McCoy spits back out, knowing he might be heading for a gag, but he’ll have at least earned it. “I can’t get you a sweetheart, Kirk. Not with that face.”  
  
Kirk smiles and lets loose a warm bubble of laughter and McCoy swears that the whole damn room goes a degree hotter.   
  
“I want your surgeon as well as you.”  
  
McCoy raises his brow calmly and challenges Kirk wordlessly as he tries to hold out. Inevitably, Kirk’s hand slides into his coat to find his dagger and spurs McCoy to speak. “Don’t have one.”  
  
McCoy refuses to flinch, even if Kirk doesn’t seem to blink or avert his gaze. He’s sure that most of his body can’t move anyhow, not with the knots Kirk has put him in. His wounds from their swordfight sting because Kirk has made sure to align the ropes along those slices in his uniform. Somewhere on the ship, Pike is safe and wearing a lowly lieutenant’s uniform, probably still drugged by McCoy’s concoction to make sure that he stays out of harm’s way.  
  
Kirk shimmies and inches his chair until it’s directly in front of McCoy as the ship around them creaks and cries in the now-growing storm. “You’re telling me,” Kirk continues in the same line of interrogation he’d started before, “that you don’t employ a surgeon? I’d even let him patch you up if you promise to dance with me again.”  
  
“Go to hell,” McCoy spits, both literally and metaphorically. He tries to aim the blood-soaked saliva for Kirk’s boots, but misses by a mile.   
  
Kirk just smiles at that, inching his chair closer. “You dance so well. The last person to get a cut like that on me was Uhura and that’s because I accidentally grasped her bosom. Honest to god, I lost my balance,” he recalls, laughing warmly as if he’s in friendly company and not with his hostage, “and my hands just went right to...well, she got my knife off me and had it against my ribs in a second flat.” His eyes search McCoy’s face intently and he narrows his eyes suspiciously. “You’re younger than people say.”  
  
“I take care of myself,” McCoy counters.  
  
“And they say you’re supposed to have blue eyes, the colour of the endlessly beautiful sea.”  
  
“They went green with envy that I wasn’t tasked with pursuing you and then they turned brown when the sea got tired of being praised,” is McCoy’s reply, ready to go toe-to-toe with Kirk if that’s how he wants to play this little game of his.   
  
Kirk seems to be willing to play for keeps. “Your Sawbones. That’s what you call him, isn’t it? Dear old Bones. Where is he? I’ve heard tell of him. Strapping like a porter, curses like a pirate, handsome as a prince, and skilled as a genius.”  
  
McCoy steadfastly does his best not to flinch or react to a single word out of Kirk’s mouth, refusing to have come this far and let  _words_ unravel him.   
  
Kirk doesn’t even seem to blink. He takes inventory of McCoy’s reaction and wets his parched lips carefully. “So you want to play it like that. I didn’t think you two were  _that_  close. Though, I can’t blame your Bones for wanting to break all those pesky little rules of the Navy for you. I would,” Kirk says. He slides gracefully into a stand, pouring water from the silver jug and filling a glass to the brim. He studies it very cautiously as if he’s suspect of its contents. It’s only a shame that McCoy hadn’t thought to dose several items in the Captain’s chambers with poison or more sedatives, just in case. “I’m not a murderer, Pike. I just have some demands and those include that pretty little treasure you’ve got your first mate guarding. I’ll take you aboard  _my_  ship, put you in my quarters, and do with you as I like. Once we have the gold, we’ll decide what to do with you then.” He acts so cavalier about it, grinning sunnily at McCoy as he reaches over to the fruit bowl in the middle of the table. “Apples, I love apples,” he groans. “Can I have it?” he asks, and begins cutting it up with his greasy, dirty, mussed hand without waiting for his permission to be granted.   
  
The sinful sound he makes as he bites into a slice is bound to send them both to hell – Kirk for making it and McCoy for being audience to it.  
  
“You just can’t get apples like that,” he sighs heavily. “Now. One last chance. You call out your pretty Doctor to fix you or I take you to my ship and you just deal with the salt-air in those wounds.”  
  
McCoy lifts his chin and refuses to damn any other member of the ship to Kirk’s grasp. He employs two other lieutenants when he requires them, but M’Benga and Puri don’t deserve to be handed off to a mad pirate. “We left him at the last port. Issue with the swell of the sea.” The very same issue that insists on McCoy losing dinner any moment now if he doesn’t keep it together.   
  
He only cares about keeping Kirk sated, makes sure that Kirk believes his pretty little lie.   
  
“It’s your loss. I lost the nurse I kept on so don’t expect much medical treatment aboard the Riverside. She met a man, what can you do?” Kirk laments with a heavy sigh. “Of course, the man in question is a bitter rival and I didn’t appreciate losing a good woman to him, but really. What can you do if you don’t want to be at the end of Korby’s blade?” He leans forward and slides his hand slowly up McCoy’s waistcoat, lips sliding up his cheek.  
  
The room gets another five degrees hotter,  _blast it all_.  
  
“I’m going to untie you now,” Kirk whispers to him. “Be a good man and don’t struggle, Pike. I wouldn’t want to thieve you of the use of your legs.”  
  
McCoy closes his eyes tightly as the ropes grow looser about his body and they slip off, giving him the opportunity to incapacitate Kirk, but with his crew lingering at all points around them, it would be a useless gambit.   
  
He’s dressed for this. He’s planned and prepared for this. In order for the plan to work, he needs to make that walk across the ships in the storm and accept his fate.   
  
He stands on uneasy feet as the sea swells around him and for a brief and terrifying moment, McCoy thinks that Kirk is going to see right through him and know that the spells of the  _Enterprise’s_  surgeon are the very same that he’s witnessing at that exact moment.  
  
McCoy holds his breath and waits, but nothing breaks and nothing happens. Instead, Kirk just nudges him at the elbow. “Let’s go. March.” He stays by his side and pushes him onwards as they approach the deck and McCoy glimpses the crew readying for departure. The number of them doesn’t seem as high as when they boarded.  
  
It only takes a moment or two for McCoy to realize where the rest of the crew have absconded to. It’s that one tricky last piece of business before the ships part ways. The  _treasure_. The real reason that pirates of Kirk’s ilk even care about their ship in the first place.  
  
McCoy is starting to feel panicked once more. His wrists are bound behind his back with coarse ropes and Kirk has ensured that he’s standing by the plank connecting the ships in order to watch the transfer of the treasure. The only problem is that with every passing minute, the storm grows worse as the winds whip around and every minute more means that Pike may wake.   
  
“This is the fastest you move?” McCoy grumbles as he’s pushed along by Kirk. “If you don’t hurry it up, the storm’s going to swallow the ship and the treasure whole.”  
  
“Do I tell you how to run your ship?” Kirk huffs mildly, but he does snap his fingers and shouts at the two men carrying the chests to hurry it up.  
  
McCoy really can’t help a snide smile of victory, even if in the grand sense of things he’s lost the battle. One good jab in, that’s all he’d hoped to get. He tries to keep Kirk’s attention on him, making sure that Kirk is at his side as they approach the side of the ship.  
  
 _Sweet merciful Lord_. McCoy stares down at the division between the ships and sees the sea beneath them stirring up a storm.  
  
“C’mon Pike, I won’t let you fall,” Kirk promises and clamps his hand down around McCoy’s forearm as Kirk all-but-strong-arms him. He’s accompanying him, though, and that’s all he can ask for. Even if Pike wakes, Scotty has strict orders to ensure that he doesn’t come charging the deck in some misguided attempt to draw fire.  
  
McCoy takes one last look at the ship that’s not his and meets Chekov’s gaze. He mouths ‘I’ll be fine’ and tries to believe it, even if he isn’t so sure about his own fate. It’s one of the greatest lies he’s ever told himself, that he’ll be fine. He’s not even sure he’ll make it to the next second. He’s dangling precipitously above the water and deep down below there are a dozen ways to die, taunting him from his high perch. He tries to steady his breath and knows that if Kirk hadn’t clamped his hand around McCoy’s upper arm, he’d have probably toppled over the edge from the shakes of fear alone.  
  
When he takes that glorious last step and arrives on the  _Riverside_ , he’s met with a dozen faces looking at him like he’s the catch of the day. He steels himself and lifts his chin up high as he can, standing proud and stubborn.  
  
“Welcome to the  _Riverside_ , Pike,” Kirk says and sounds damn proud of his boat. “Take him to my cabin,” he orders of an Asian man and a reed-thin African woman. “He doesn’t leave.”  
  
The sound of wood cracking and splashing crushes any last hope that McCoy had that he could escape this. The plank is lost to the sea and the waves are swelling higher than before.   
  
“You heard him,” the woman says as she yanks on his shoulder. “In the cabin, Pike.”  
  
He wonders, not for the first time, how exactly he’s going to be fine. He just has to hope that someone on the  _Enterprise_  has some kind of plan to keep him alive. He’s started to grow somewhat attached to this little life of his, after all.  
  
*  
  
Kirk’s cabin has become his home. McCoy tries not to think about how inherently depressing that fact is. There’s a bed, surprisingly, bolted in by thick walls, and there are books to occupy the mind. There are also, interestingly enough, musical instruments lingering about the cabin. There’s very little order to them, almost as if Kirk had picked them up and not known what to do with them other than keep them strewn about the place.   
  
On the second day of his imprisonment on the ship, McCoy finally picks up the violin. He’s discarded his coat atop Kirk’s chair and stands now only in his shirt, waistcoat, cravat loosened and pants dirtied with smudges as comes from being held hostage on a pirate’s ship that hasn’t seen a good cleaning in years.  
  
The bow is across the room and McCoy weathers the stormy distance to pick it up, settling down on a chair and steadying his feet. The storm has yet to fully clear, but it no longer attempts to pick up the ship and pitch it through the air at the nearest island.   
  
He plucks at the strings and wonders where Kirk’s managed to pick up this little piece. Then again, looking at the assortment of things that don’t belong in this cabin – himself included – he doesn’t really spend much time occupying his thoughts with Kirk’s procurement of one more mere instrument. The heavy weight of the violin beneath his chin is strange and comforting at once, bringing him back to a time that had been easier. When he had owned his own practice and worried about his patients and his baby girl and pleasing his wife – a time when the sea hadn’t been his only option.  
  
He adjusts his posture, shoulders rolled back easily as he regards the strings before him and slides his index finger against beautifully carved-wood.   
  
Every jolt the sea delivers isn’t enough to distract him from the music. He closes his eyes and lets the bow dance gracefully across the strings, earning a beautiful cascade of notes accompanying the occasional atonal anomaly.   
  
With missed notes and errors made, McCoy recalls what Joanna used to beg of him, to play the soft and easy lilting Bach melody that she had loved so much. With far less  _grazioso_  than the piece deserves but with great devotion and dedication, McCoy begins to play.   
  
He makes it past the first dozen bars before he draws the bow too sharply back across the violin. It’s a rush of alarm that makes him react so. Kirk has pulled the doors open and looks within the room with bemusement.   
  
“I thought I heard music,” he says as he steps inside and makes a gesture with his fingers that seems to tell McCoy to go on.  
  
Never one to simply follow orders, McCoy lowers the violin and clutches the bow in his hand like a weapon. If he couldn’t best Kirk with a sword, he stands little chance with a portion of a musical instrument and Kirk seems to appreciate the effort.   
  
“Really, Pike,” Kirk chides. “Keep playing.” He searches around the room – for what, McCoy has no earthly idea – and keeps glancing over his shoulder as if expectant. “Do you know any Corelli? More Bach? Mozart, the devilish genius child. I like Mozart’s work, you know.”  
  
“You would,” McCoy harrumphs under his breath, rolling his eyes as he tightens his grip on the bow. Against his better judgment, he lifts the violin once more and settles it beneath his chin. The instrument rubs against his neck and McCoy knows he’s bound to earn marks, knows that if he were home and things were still happy that Jocelyn might have teased him about finding another love, but he’s on a pirate’s ship and the only comments he’ll get are the sort he doesn’t want to hear at all.   
  
He swallows and his Adam’s apple brushes against the wood of the violin as he imagines what sort of marks Kirk would leave, his mind running wild and into dangerous territory merely because he’s allowing it.   
  
“Bach,” McCoy commands. If he’s made to play like a monkey with cymbals, he’ll at least choose the piece. “Quartet in C-sharp minor,” he says as he reads from what Kirk’s been looking for (and found). Sheet music. “There is only one of me.”  
  
“Two,” Kirk corrects as he fishes out a cello from the pantry of all places. McCoy’s impression of the dastardly Dread Pirate Kirk is quickly dissipating. Next, he’s sure to find a flour-drawer stuffed with a piccolo. “So we’ll have to be good enough for four.”  
  
McCoy affords Kirk a wary look as he snatches the sheet music from his hand, not sure why he’s doing this when there’s no sword pointed to his throat. The kid looks so overly eager that McCoy wonders whether Kirk has set himself apart from his crew and can’t get anyone to accompany him. He wonders if this cabin has only seen unaccompanied pieces for the last few years and doesn’t know why he ought to be bothering to care.  
  
Soon enough, Kirk will discover the truth and McCoy will likely be fed to the sharks. His days of caring are numbered.  
  
McCoy is missing more notes than he hits as they play and he’s not sure how much of it is nerves and how much belongs to his terrible sight-reading skills. It’s been a lifetime since he played these pieces for a little girl who would applaud anything – terrible, talented, or not. Kirk never once takes his eyes off him and it seems like even if he’s trapped behind an instrument as bulky as the cello, he’d have no trouble escaping to trap McCoy if an escape attempt is made.  
  
Whatever game of normality they’re playing at, it makes McCoy tense and soon he begins to play sharps and flats, missing notes and causing a terrible cacophony to the ears. Kirk plays one last note and lets the rested pause take over for a long moment as he studies McCoy.  
  
“According to all my sources, you don’t play any instruments,” he says suspiciously.  
  
“When talking of my accomplishments, my meagre attempts at playing the violin don’t come up,” McCoy says defensively, trying to ease them away from the topic before Kirk can start asking too many questions. “Honestly, Kirk. Don’t you have a ransom letter to be writing? Or a hold filled with gold to be lovingly stroking?”  
  
“I did that earlier this morning,” Kirk assures as he sets the instrument down and sprawls back in his wooden chair. The wooden posts and walls creak around them as the ship pitches up on a larger-than-usual swell and McCoy grasps for the table to steady himself. “Still missing those sea legs?” Kirk says mildly.  
  
“Shut up,” McCoy snaps back at him. “Why do you have so many instruments around?”  
  
Kirk shrugs, like even he’s not entirely sure. “No reason to pitch them over the ship while I still have room. It’s nice to have variety. Uhura plays the lyre for us sometimes and Sulu’s usually the man we turn to when we want a rousing violin solo.”  
  
It’s the mildest pirate tales he’s ever been told and McCoy wonders – not for the first time – how Kirk manages to keep afloat when there are more dangerous predators out there.   
  
McCoy sets the violin down on a nearby table and gives Kirk a long and considerate look, trying not to tell him everything as if to mitigate the damage that will be done when Kirk discovers who McCoy actually is.  
  
“Gaila wants to know if you have any requests for dinner,” Kirk says while McCoy is ruminating on the worth of saying something.  
  
McCoy arches a brow. “I get a choice?”  
  
“She’s very concerned about making an impression now that I’m permitting you prepared food,” Kirk says, sliding his fingers over the violin that McCoy had been playing, as if he’s trying to feed off the warmth. “Chicken?”  
  
“So long as you won’t make me butcher it,” McCoy agrees, still slightly dazed at being  _asked_  his preference.  
  
Kirk studies the sheet music that they’ve been playing off of, his eyes never remaining on McCoy for more than a few seconds, but every once in a while he checks as if to make sure that McCoy hasn’t slipped between the floorboards and vanished. McCoy raises a pointed eyebrow that Kirk’s sure to catch the next time he looks over. “Problem, Pike?” Kirk asks curtly.  
  
“Don’t you have things to do,  _Captain_?” McCoy asks icily, not ready to be on display for this long a period. Every second that passes is an added worry that Kirk is going to be the genius that all the islands laud him for and figure him out. Worse, every second that passes is one more in which all of McCoy’s worst fears can play out. What if one of the crew has met Pike before? What if Pike himself (the idiot captain) comes sailing after them? What if they suddenly decide he’s worthless and then go after someone worth more? Every one of these thoughts has been circling in McCoy’s mind like sharks sniffing at the kill and he’s not sure when one of them will be his inevitable end.   
  
Kirk seems to take affront to the tone and sets the violin back on the table, using the bow to place it under McCoy’s chin and tip his gaze upwards, as if such a fey little gesture is enough to command respect and authority in the moment.   
  
“Chicken,” he says decisively. “I’ll give Gaila your regards.”  
  
He hands the bow off to McCoy and doesn’t look back as he exits the cabin.  
  
Only when he leaves does McCoy finally exhale relief at earning yet another temporary reprieve from an unknown danger.  
  
*  
  
It’s been two weeks on the  _Riverside_  and McCoy has yet to see the deck. He’s exhausted the trinkets in Kirk’s room and is considering taking out the maps once more when Kirk storms into the Captain’s quarters, shoving the doors open and glowering at McCoy.   
  
“Let me guess,” McCoy drawls. “Uhura wouldn’t give you the last apple slice?”  
  
What he doesn’t expect is for Kirk to storm forward and backhand McCoy with force, using his elbow to pin down against his windpipe as he straddles the older man in the rickety and wide wooden chair. “God...damn it, Kirk!” McCoy wheezes out. He’d known that this had been a possibility, that one day Kirk would merely snap and kill him. The pirate had seemed so civil, though, almost as if he hadn’t belonged in this life.  
  
“Bastard,” Kirk accuses. He may look angry, but he sounds hurt. “Mongrel! Whoreson.” He adds more pressure against McCoy’s windpipe. “The Navy just returned their response to my demands.” He eases off, just enough that McCoy has been given back the ability to speak. “You,” Kirk says hotly, “are not Pike.”  
  
McCoy stares at him and doesn’t say anything that might condemn him.  
  
“Who are you?” Kirk demands.   
  
Once more, McCoy doesn’t utter a single sound.  
  
“ _Who are you_?”  
  
McCoy knows that there’s no point to allowing the lie to go on any further. He lets out a heavy sigh and stares at Kirk with regret and apology in his eyes, though he has nothing to be sorry for and stands by his actions. He’d do it a hundred times over, maybe even a thousand.  
  
He reaches up and presses his thumb to the scar on Kirk’s neck, made by McCoy’s sword. Lightly, faintly, he brushes the pad of his thumb there and McCoy watches with sick fascination as it makes Kirk shiver and withdraw his hips suddenly. “Anyone who says that I’m a genius with a scalpel is an idiot who’s too eager to praise. Bones,” he says, giving away his identity and taking all of Kirk’s leverage in one blow.  
  
“Bastard,” Kirk hisses again and withdraws from McCoy’s thumb, storming out of the Captain’s quarters without a single moment’s hesitation.  
  
McCoy doesn’t see the Captain for three long days after that.   
  
*   
  
The next McCoy sees of Kirk, he still appears angry. He’s also carrying two trays with him as he enters the cabin. McCoy has only been allowed to the deck for the first time the other day and it had been with Sulu’s sword at his back, encouraging him along in order to treat a shipmate with scurvy. McCoy glances up from the book he’s currently reading about trade in China and sets it down on his knee to mark the place.  
  
“Poison?”  
  
“I asked Gaila for beef, but you never know with the woman,” is Kirk’s distracted reply, lifting the covers off of the plates and staring at McCoy over the table. “I hate that book.”  
  
“I’ve read all the rest you have to offer.” McCoy looks up to appraise Kirk’s mood. They haven’t actually spoken since Kirk found out that McCoy had been posing as Pike and he’s not exactly sure what punishment will be meted out to him for such a thing. “If you hate it, why do you still keep it?”  
  
“I might need to know how to trade gold in China one day,” Kirk says, his voice dulled. “You lied.”  
  
“Oh, for...you’re a goddamn pirate and you’re acting like a spoiled brat because  **I**  lied?” McCoy scoffs, unable to believe his ears. “God knows what you would’ve done with Pike! The Navy cares about that man too damn much and I couldn’t let you have him. Not when I owed him my life.”  
  
“So I got the Sawbones civilian instead,” Kirk says.  
  
“Don’t sound too happy about it,” McCoy says with a roll of his eyes.   
  
“I’m not disappointed.” Before McCoy can interpret that, Kirk unveils the dinner and slides the plate across with cutlery rolled tightly in a napkin. “Go on, eat. Now that I know who you really are, I want to talk. I want you to tell me everything about you. I’ve been toting a stranger along on my boat and I don’t take too kindly to providing room and board for people whose history I don’t know.”  
  
McCoy hadn’t expected Kirk to suddenly demand his hopes and dreams of him. “You do remember I didn’t ask to be on this ship.”  
  
“It’s more than fine,” Kirk assures with a tight smile. “You may not be Pike, but you underestimate yourself. Apparently the Navy doesn’t care about you, but the medical community does. You’re something of a genius according to the ransom offer we received.”  
  
McCoy goes chilled as he wonders who would be  _that much_  of an idiot...  
  
“Doctor Boyce would be more than happy to pay for you.”  
  
McCoy rolls his eyes and probably could have guessed if given two more seconds. He’s not surprised that his colleagues are idiots, but he had at least had hope that they would have just let him go once they got word that Kirk had him. He pokes at the food on his plate and wonders what the weather is like at the moment, if the night is just chilly enough to take a brisk walk after when the wine has settled.  
  
“Don’t look so glum,” Kirk sighs and rolls his eyes heavenwards. “Have I really treated you so badly?”  
  
“Other than acting like a spoiled child throwing a temper tantrum?” McCoy coolly baits.  
  
“You lied to me.”  
  
“Again, you’re a pirate. Worse things have happened in your life,” McCoy retorts. Outside, the sea has finally calmed. McCoy hates to allow the praise, but he’s almost impressed by the way that Kirk’s crew handled the storm. They couldn’t outrun it, so they merely braced themselves for the inevitable and battened down the hatches and made sure the sails wouldn’t be ripped to shreds.   
  
They may be a motley crew of sailors, but they know how to keep themselves afloat. It’s evening now and the dusky light spills into the cabin, wondering where his path is going to end now that Kirk knows the truth and seems resigned to sullen acceptance.  
  
McCoy lifts the lid covering his plate and inspects the food, still unconvinced that Kirk (or some other zealous crewmate) hasn’t taken it upon himself to dose it in order to rid themselves of their unexpected little surgical  _problem_.  
  
“So why would Boyce pay so much for you when you’re just out at sea, patching up gunshot wounds and forcing good food down men’s throats?” Kirk asks as he stretches out in his chair, feet brushing against McCoy’s as they share this small space around the table. “Why would the Navy take you on her flagship?”  
  
“You’re asking for logic?” McCoy asks dubiously. “I suppose once upon a time, I used to be valuable. I’m not, anymore,” he says pointedly before Kirk can interrupt. “I did an unforgivable thing or two and no one in port tends to hire you once word spreads. The divorce didn’t help, either.” It’s more sharing than McCoy is used to and while he hasn’t spilled everything, he still feels as if he’s given Kirk more than he deserves.   
  
Kirk just keeps staring at McCoy and doesn’t move to eat his food.   
  
McCoy refuses to take the first bite either, so they find themselves in a strange standstill.  
  
“Divorce, hmm?” Kirk murmurs nosily. “What was her problem?”  
  
“Wasn’t the same man she married,” is the easy way out that he takes. Saying ‘she didn’t think that she married a murderer’ seems oddly personal, even if Kirk seems to want to know about him. He adjusts slightly and in the process his foot drags against Kirk’s ankle, bare and rough with coarse hair. He suppresses the feeling it gives him – a sickening rush that makes him feel nauseated and giddy at once. “If you’re so curious, then you must enjoy to share. What drove you to piracy?”  
  
“I don’t do well with other men’s rules,” Kirk replies and unrolls his fork from his napkin, tucking it into his neck as he begins to poke at the potatoes and meat on the plate, taking the first bite and assuaging only  _some_  of McCoy’s fears.   
  
He mirrors Kirk’s movements and pierces a cut up slice of meat, extending it out across the table.  
  
Kirk laughs. This is nothing more than a joke to him. “Why, Bones,” he drawls, voice like honey and poison – all sticky sweet and lethal. “How romantic.”  
  
“Eat it,” McCoy demands. “Prove that your crew isn’t trying to poison me.”  
  
Kirk rolls his eyes and leans forward over the table, parting his lips just widely enough to press down over the fork and slide backwards, the piece of meat now in his mouth. He chews and really gets the work in his jaw before he swallows.  
  
Forty seconds later and they’re both sitting there in healthy silence. McCoy understands that it may yet be a slow-acting poison, but Kirk was willing to take the chance. He plucks up the knife from beside him and begins to stab and saw at the meat, using the opportunity to get his frustrations out as best as he can.   
  
“What was your wife like?” Kirk asks curiously.  
  
“I don’t like to talk about her,” McCoy mutters gruffly.  
  
“What  _do_  you like to talk about?” Kirk wonders, making slower work of his own food. It’s almost as if he’s trying to extend this meeting, to elongate the hours of dinner by eating slowly.  
  
Almost as if to be difficult and to make it so that Kirk isn’t going to get what he wants, McCoy stays steadfastly silent, offering a challenging look that just dares Kirk to prod and try and find more than that out.   
  
“My father was a Navy-man,” Kirk finally speaks when he seems to accept that McCoy won’t just talk. “Following the rules got him killed and destroyed my mother. You’ve never seen a widow more wrecked. My brother ran away for London when he was just a boy and I was left to make my own way.”  
  
“And you chose this.”  
  
“And you chose that,” Kirk hotly counters, stepping on McCoy’s words and not even waiting to see what else he might have to say. “What makes your choice more valid?”  
  
“It’s not  _illegal_!” McCoy snaps.  
  
“You’re living by the laws of men who don’t  _care_  what happens to you. I care about my crew and I take care of them. More than the majority of you Navyboys,” Kirk says with a sneer. “You may be the exception, Doctor McCoy, but the rule says that people put themselves first. I don’t do that. And yes, we might steal things in order to pay for it, but it funds a better lifestyle.”  
  
McCoy sighs heavily and wearily. Kirk is too young to have been in this life as long as he has been, by all accounts.  
  
“Why did your wife divorce you?” Kirk asks again when the silence becomes seemingly unbearable and the creaking of the wooden walls can’t carry the conversation.  
  
“She didn’t want our daughter around me and I did a terrible thing.” McCoy keeps his attention on his dinner, even if it’s quickly vanishing and he won’t have it to distract his gaze much longer. He vehemently doesn’t want to give Kirk the satisfaction of a too-long linger, to look at those impossible-eyes and the scars on his neck and face that belie the life he’s been leading. “Don’t ask for specifics. You won’t get them.”  _Not unless you ask ashore_ , he doesn’t add, pushing around soggy potatoes on his plate.  
  
“You did something incredible for Pike,” Kirk says quietly. “And Boyce says you do incredible things for people on the whole.”  
  
“I told you, I’m just another sawbones.”  
  
“Liar,” Kirk accuses evenly, his voice staying determined. “I don’t have a single crewman who’d do for me what you did for Pike and they adore me.”  
  
“That just means none of them are as stupid as I am,” McCoy growls and rolls his eyes. “Don’t hang up some hero complex on my shoulders.”  
  
“I wouldn’t dare hide those impressive things,” Kirk says and McCoy may have gone a good time without any kind of romantic contact, but that is a flirtatious tone if he’s ever heard one. The rollicking sensation is back with more nausea and giddiness, threatening to sap him of breath and sanity at once. McCoy looks up in time to see Kirk’s attentive stare fixated on him. “Why would Boyce pay for you?”  
  
“I contribute to the medical community more than others because I have no goddamn life. I’m always at sea. Experimenting is as good a way as any to pass the time.”  
  
“And keep your mind off her?” Kirk says with a knowing look.  
  
McCoy just doesn’t mention how many  _hers_  exist in this equation.  
  
McCoy finishes with his plate of food and Kirk – for all his efforts – doesn’t take that long to catch up. It’s not long before the sun outside has vanished from the sky and their plates are empty, their stomachs full.  
  
“Well? Are you going to keep asking little curiosities?” McCoy wonders as he pats the corners of his lips with his napkin, mentally comparing this to his dinners with Pike, if only in the back of his mind. He’s not sure what else there is to tell about himself. Barring the excitement of his marriage and divorce, the tragedy of his family and his father, he’s a dull man when you boil things down.   
  
Kirk pushes his plate away and reclines backwards. “No,” he says, stretching out and sliding his hands behind his head. “Just thought I’d let you know that we’re within a week of reaching our destination. Provided the Navy doesn’t assault us and the ransom is waiting, you’ll be a free man soon enough. I thought you’d like to know.”  
  
McCoy isn’t sure how Kirk quantifies  _free_ , so rather than obsessing over the minute details, he lets that be a balm to his worries. He sits there still and unmoving until Kirk finally breaks the silence by clanging plates together as he begins to tidy up. “Do you want any help?” McCoy asks.  
  
“No. I’ll have these to Gaila before you bed down in the hammock. And maybe tomorrow you’ll think about sharing more,” Kirk says, grasping McCoy’s bare plate from him. “After all, you did still lie to me. In my books, that means you owe me something.” He uses his hip to open doors for him and McCoy doesn’t even get the chance to protest that kidnapping him in the first place overrides any hardship that he thinks has come upon him.  
  
The feeling of a warm meal in his stomach is doing wonders, but it’s no comparison to the weight off his back. At least now, no matter what happens, it will happen with the ship knowing of his true identity and if, God forbid, something does happen, the message will get back to land.   
  
He’ll die known, if that’s to be his end.   
  
*  
  
The  _Riverside_ , if you listen to local gossip, is the ship you pray stays away from your port. Not violent, but thieves of the highest order and bound to take anything they need in order to survive. The worst only for that and only for the additional reason being that the _Narada_  and its Captain have been rumoured to be sailing in the Indies looking for buried riches.  
  
The dreaded  _Narada_  flies a flag that can’t be mistaken for any other. The flag bears a grey triangle slanting downwards and a dual-coloured butterfly adorning the triangle, foreign script atop it and offering the misnomer that the ship shouldn’t be considered dangerous.  
  
It is the same flag on the ship bearing fast for the Riverside, men poised on ropes and wearing gaudy jewels and ink marks on their bodies.  
  
McCoy knows all about the  _Narada’s_  well-earned reputation. He’s had to patch up the aftermath of the  _Narada_  too many times after the pirates have stormed his shores. They leave behind a bloody wake and care little for small trinkets. They care for high-profile hostages, large heists, and making a name for themselves by killing as many as they can and destroying in the process. They also care about ruling the seas and Kirk and his crew pose a threat to them. It must seem simple in the mind of a pirate: Kill or be killed.   
  
McCoy just hadn’t expected the killing ground to come to him.   
  
He’d been up at the mast with Kirk as they discussed directionality and their destination when the first sighting had been called from crow’s nest. McCoy knows this pit in his stomach. He’d experienced it not long ago when Kirk had been the pirate coming to conquer. He has the feeling that Nero and his men will be far less merciful.  
  
“Kirk...”  
  
“Stay here,” Kirk warns, sounding half-mad with fury and young at the very same time. “Sulu, Uhura! Get ready. It looks like Nero’s come to pay us back for the Indies.”  
  
 _What happened in the Indies?_  is the desperate question that McCoy wants to ask, but he’s sure that he won’t like the story.   
  
Without warning or another word, Kirk vanishes to rouse some kind of defense and McCoy is left staring at the impending battle. This is the second fight between ships he’s seen in weeks and while he can hear Kirk rattling off plans to Sulu – involving reefing the  _Narada_ , sending someone over with gunpowder and matches, and trying to pick off Nero from a good distance – it’s all too late for that as the _Narada’s_  cannons begin their fire and the planks are hoisted out from the depths of the other ship.   
  
If you had asked him years ago, McCoy would have told you that good is good and evil is evil and there is no in-between, no shades of gray. That had been before a divorce gone awry, before a mercy-killing, and before this very moment on the deck of a pirate ship as he stares at Kirk jumping from the masthead to the lower deck to charge Nero’s men as they jump aboard his ship – the pirates of the pirate world, scum lower than the average criminal.  
  
McCoy has treated many a man suffering from various wounds before. He’s seen scurvy and dysentery. He’s had to chop off limbs and treat the mildest of flu. He’s caught babies for most of the women of town and he’s patched up gunshot wounds.   
  
He feels a chill rush down his back as he grips the banister and watches the array beneath him. This small theatre of war is fought hand-to-hand and Nero has only dispatched twenty of his men – child’s work for Kirk and his crew – but each kill earned on the part of Kirk’s crew seems ravenous. Soon, a pile of bodies is piling up and McCoy recalls whispers as to why the  _Riverside_  seems so very eager to do away with the ne’er-do-wells.  
  
 _Kirk’s father was taken from him when he was just a babe by Nero. He’s been out for revenge ever since, blood swearing for it when he couldn’t even speak the word. It’s all they talk about at some ports. The disaster on the Kelvin. A dead Captain at sea, seemingly traded for a new baby at port._  
  
McCoy stares at the fray and finally moves from his frozen state, trying to get to Kirk and to pull him away. He’s seen too many men throw their lives away on vengeance and he’ll be damned if a man like Kirk – who has promise to him if he just obeyed the damn law for once and who’s been more merciful to McCoy than he deserves – goes down that gutter like all the rest.  
  
 _They say that Kirk will stop at nothing to see Nero dead._  
  
Not even death.  
  
He grasps at the railing and hauls himself down the stairs, grasping at his rapier and knowing it won’t do much in the face of a hail of bullets. Kirk is across the ship, facing off with Nero and looking worse for the wear. Neither man has a gun in his hand and McCoy only hesitates for a moment before he throws himself on the deck, sliding over to use one of Nero’s men as a shield as he digs through pockets of ragged linens to find a knife, a dagger,  _something_ , anything. The smoke from discharged guns fogs up the deck and McCoy crawls on hands and elbows to grab a flint-lock rifle, pushing to his feet and keeping his eyes around him as he readies the gun to be fired.  
  
“Kirk!” he shouts, getting the man’s attention. Hand on one of the banisters that lead up to the helm of the ship, he uses his other to flex his forearm and throw the gun with enough force that anyone looking to intercept it would have to be as quick as lightning to grasp it.  
  
When McCoy is assured that Kirk has a firm hold of the gun, he hurries up the stairs and gets himself to high ground, as if that’s safe in the melee. It’s from this high vantage point that he watches Kirk steady the gun in his hands, the barrel pressed against Nero’s neck.   
  
There’s going to be no sympathy here. Kirk may not be a killer, but everyone has an exception.   
  
McCoy looks away when the trigger is pulled, but it’s impossible not to hear the din of the gun. It’s impossible not to imagine the flash of the thing. He struggles to get the feeling of the ground under his feet, unsteady as the waves contribute to his lack of surety.   
  
With Nero attended to by Kirk, the rest of the men seem to be without clear direction. They try, do they ever, but Kirk’s crew are swift and efficient and  _killers_. Bodies fall to the ground never to breathe again and it’s all done at Kirk’s say-so. McCoy wishes that he could place this in some moral shade of grey, but that means he’d have to first understand. As the fight disperses, McCoy breathes relief and looks to his arms to see the hairs on edge. He’s never been this close to the battle before. Always, he’s the first stop when the smoke from the guns has settled and the cannons are quiet. He’ll saw a bone and set the crew right, but he never sees the action.   
  
It’s so  _cold_ , is what he realizes. Now that the flashes have dimmed and the guns have stopped discharging, McCoy feels the briskness of the foggy day on the water.   
  
He looks to the deck to search out Kirk as if to seek approval. Their ground has been less shaky now that McCoy has been attempting to right the wrongs of his lie (one he stands by and would do a thousand times over in order to save Pike’s life), but there are moments when McCoy expects Kirk to draw his sword and be done with him.  
  
McCoy licks his parched lips, swallowing hard as pain envelopes him.   
  
What is it he says to Pike’s men?  _When you’re shot, you’ve got a blissful few moments before the shock wears off. Cherish that before I have to start digging around for the bullet and save your cursed asses._  
  
He stares down at his torso and sees the bullet hole and the sluggish pulsing of blood as it pours out, all at once explaining the weakness and the change of temperature. It also may explain the sudden look of shock and grief on Kirk’s face as he vaults back up the stairs. “Bones!” he cries out in alarm. “Uhura, Henderson, help me!” is his desperate cry, but he’s already catching McCoy when he loses the ability to stand and goes keening towards the deck in a fell swoop that threatens to bring his head into direct contact with the mast. He curls McCoy’s body in close to his and breathes hard from the exertion of the battle, slapping McCoy’s cheeks to keep him conscious. “C’mon, Bones,” Kirk begs. “C’mon. Stay with us.”  
  
“It didn’t exit,” McCoy sputters out, hacking up heavily and groaning as the pain doubles. “Get all the medical equipment you have. Fresh sheets, sterilize everything, and then bring it to me.” The edges of his vision have started to grow fuzzy and go dark, but McCoy grabs at Kirk’s wrists. “Slap harder,” he coaxes, letting out a cry of pain as Kirk does as he’s told. “Tell your men to get me smelling salts. I need to be conscious while I do this.”  
  
The panic on Kirk’s face seems to double and McCoy starts to wonder about something else that seems more pressingly urgent than his current condition.  
  
“...Nero?”  
  
Kirk’s expression darkens and he stares at McCoy, gripping hold of his arm as he begins to port him back towards the cabin. “He won’t be polluting the seas anymore. The crew is disposing of the rest of them. Uhura’s going to burn down their ship. Bones, none of that is going to matter if they claim your life in the fray,” he says. “We’ll talk about this later. What do you need to fix you?”  
  
“Get me inside,” McCoy says. He understands that there’s sweat beginning to collect at the back of his neck, but he feels chilled yet. He could be operating in Siberia for the temperature he feels. He looks up to find an anchor and latches onto Kirk’s eyes, searching for stability in those blue eyes and breathing hard and heavy. “Whatever medical equipment you have, bring it.”  
  
“Bones,” Kirk says, clasping at his wrist and pressing down tightly enough to make bruises. “Talk.”  
  
Belatedly, McCoy realizes that his eyes had been slipping shut. The pain isn’t overwhelming, but between the drop in his body’s temperature and the loss of blood, his system is trying to shut off. It would be so easy to slip away into the depths of the blackness surrounding him and coaxing him lower. He wants to drown and let his limbs give in to their heaviness. There’s nothing left for him ashore with Jocelyn refusing to let Joanna close to him and the sea has been driving McCoy further off the edge.  
  
“I can’t see her.”  
  
“See who? Bones, are you seeing things?” Kirk asks with alarm as he, Gaila, and Henderson get him settled on the bed and Kirk starts to rip off his clothes, tearing long shreds of expensive linens bought for McCoy by Pike.   
  
Each touch of the air to his skin is enough to make him hiss and brings him starkly back to his senses. “Joanna,” he breathes out her name.   
  
“Who?” Kirk sounds worried and jealous at once, looking around him. There’s no spectre in the room for McCoy to be seeing, but the crew doesn’t know that. Kirk is dismissing everyone but Gaila, who he gives orders to bring fresh water in a bin. “Where?”  
  
“Not here. It’s my daughter. My daughter, whom I can’t see,” McCoy says, and that’s about all he can take of the sharing while there’s still a bullet residing deep within the tissue of his body. He reaches to the tray beside him and plucks up the scalpel, yanking at the remnants of his clothes and pushing it away onto the floor of Kirk’s cabin. His fingers are clumsy and in the panic of searching for an operating tool, he sends the other surgical clamps and knives scattering to the floor noisily.  
  
It sharpens his senses momentarily and he stares down at his torso. Each breath is a battle fought in and out as he thinks of what it will feel like to cut into his conscious body.   
  
“Kirk,” McCoy roughly demands. “Leather. Wrap it in linen. Please,” he adds after, as though a brief and barely recalled thought. He barely abides by the smell and while it may keep him conscious, he doesn’t relish the thought of gagging on the thing keeping him from blacking out in pain.  
  
Kirk is swift in returning with whatever McCoy asks for and it gives McCoy the dire and strange hope that perhaps he can make this right without causing the end of his mortality. Scalpel in mildly-shaking hands, McCoy frames the wound and swallows hard as he stares up at Kirk, trapped in those blue eyes once more. “If I die,” McCoy growls, “I will be very angry with you.”  
  
“If you die, the Navy’s going to have my hide,” Kirk reminds McCoy. “So fix it.”  
  
Well, at least McCoy knows that everyone’s priorities are well in order.  
  
The first incision is enough to bring a staggering and stark cry of pain. It only evaporates when Kirk shoves a worn and cracked leather belt – wrapped carefully in the tattered shreds of McCoy’s shirt – into his mouth. A scream becomes a pained cry and McCoy fights through the blinding white flashes of pain to make the cut long enough, letting the scalpel clatter to the floor when he achieves his task.  
  
“Bones,” Kirk murmurs his name as if a guttural prayer. It’s ignored as McCoy worries about the far more pressing matter of finding the bullet. His fingers slide inside the wound, slick against blood and struggle to reach for tweezers with his other hand. The contortion of his body evokes yet another piercing cry of abject pain, but he settles himself back.   
  
The pain has to keep him conscious without pushing him over the edge. He’s returned to walking yet another perilous tightrope and as his shaking fingers attempt to find the bullet, he repeats to himself a constant mantra:  _Stay alert and alive, stay alive and alert._  
  
McCoy can still hear Kirk’s voice, but whether he’s speaking to McCoy or to his crew fades beyond him and he only pays attention to clamping down on the bullet and sliding it out against the very present fear that one slip and shake of his hands will be too much and he will render himself unconscious.  
  
“If I pass out,” he barks out as he spits aside the linen-covered belt, leg spastically kicking outwards and hooking at Kirk’s knee from behind, tugging him in closer. Kirk struggles to retain balance, but doesn’t topple over atop him. “You take these clamps and get the bullet out, clean the wound,” he orders, hand trembling with its own small earthquake.  
  
And then it stills.  
  
Suddenly, in a blink, his fingers and hand has gone steady.  
  
He gapes up at Kirk in lack of comprehension and realizes belatedly that Kirk has slid his palm under McCoy’s and stabilized it. “Bullet out, then clean the wound,” Kirk repeats with a nod of understanding, acting as the steady anchor as he slowly pulls with McCoy in order to take out the foreign object from McCoy’s body.  
  
It’s not until he hears the clatter of metal on metal that McCoy relaxes. Hours may have passed, but it only feels like terrifying seconds.   
  
“We’ll get you cleaned up, now, Bones,” Kirk is saying, clasping hard against his shoulder and leaning in so close that McCoy can smell the gunpowder and blood and  _death_  all over him. “You can relax now.”  
  
McCoy will refuse to ever concede that this is Kirk’s effect on him, but as his body slowly ebbs towards the loss of consciousness, he has to admit that possibly, he does feel  _relaxed_  -- considering he’s a man whose blood has stained most inches of Kirk’s ship and whose life might have simply ended today.  
  
And yet, as he exhales a breath and slips into the darkness, he relaxes to the sounds of panicked cries echoing above him.   
  
*  
  
Each day after the battle brings with it a new sense of calm. The crew converse outside Kirk’s cabin as though the day is no different than any other and the battle is only a figment of his mind, though the wound in his side begs to contend for its reality.  
  
McCoy has finally regained sensation down to his very toes. He’s woken each morning in Kirk’s large Captain’s bed and wiggles his toes for minutes on end, delighting in the way they move. Kirk hasn’t permitted him to leave and has taken to sleeping in the hammock nearby. The bed itself is bricked in by several heavy pieces, but it still sways just enough to give McCoy the faintest feeling of seasickness.  
  
Rather than make him miserable, it gives McCoy a renewed sense of purpose.  
  
He is  _alive_  to feel as seasick as he does. It’s a start.  
  
They’ve not been swaying to the rhythm of the sea for six hours now and McCoy has been waiting on Kirk to appear. He’s seen Sulu and Uhura – the both arriving to offer him wishes for better healing – and he’s even seen Mitchell and Henderson. Gaila, who used to be the Captain’s Woman, is currently perched on the bed beside him.  
  
“I used to be the one under those covers,” she purrs and causes McCoy to go as green as the splotches of colour on her cheeks. She’d once been in an accident and the dye had permanently stuck to her skin. It’d given her an exotic look, but no port had wanted her after that. “Oh, don’t look like that. We’re at port. Your treasure is in our belly and we’re ready to let you go.”  
  
“And you?”  
  
“Me?” She smiles sweetly, but there’s sorrow hiding behind that smile. “The fire stole away any chance I had at finding myself a good husband. No man wants to hire me because I scare the children and the customers. I don’t have a choice. Kirk gives me berth and I give him what I can. Food, sometimes companionship.”  
  
“Gaila...” he starts before he realizes that he has nothing to give her. There’s no solace to offer when he doesn’t know what sort of happy ending he can use to try and give her hope. He smiles instead, one to mask the pain and reaches out to lightly squeeze her hand.  
  
She smiles sweetly back at him. “You’re a good man. They’re all good men here,” she says warningly, as if he’s been thinking otherwise – and he has been, it’s been difficult to rid the preconceived notions from his mind. “I’ll tell Kirk not to wear you out too much.”  
  
She leaves and closes the door firmly behind her. It leaves McCoy just enough time to start wiggling his toes again and marvel at the second chance he was given. He can hear gulls outside the window, calling to him and giving the promise of land and safety. The heavy pillows and blankets of Kirk’s bed should be suffocating, but instead they swath him in protection and promise not to let him go.   
  
He has yet to receive his official pardon. Kirk has yet to tell him that he’s free to go rather than walk the plank.  
  
Slowly, he begins to dismantle the grasp the pillows have on him. He pries himself out of bed slowly, the gunshot wound in his stomach keeping him from moving too quickly. He lets out a long groan of pain as he grabs for the wall and tries to bite down on his lower lip to stem the pain.  
  
“What are you doing!” Kirk demands, alarm cutting through his voice as he bursts into the room, hurrying to his side to help brace him into a sit. “Honestly, Bones, if this is how you were with Pike all the time, I can see how the whole ship was willing to let me just walk off with you.”  
  
“You’re not funny, kid,” McCoy spits at him.  
  
“Kirk the Kid,” he echoes with a faint smirk. “You know, I think I could come around to that. I mean, it beats  _Tiberius_.” McCoy shoots him a confused look. “Long story.” He slides his arm around McCoy’s waist, fingers careful to avoid any white-tissued scars that may be forming to repair the damage done by the bullet. “We’re docked,” he says, quieter than before. “It’s time for you to go.”  
  
McCoy turns to look at Kirk, searching for some kind of emotion. Instead, he finds himself staring at a boy too young to have found himself ensconced in this life.   
  
“Jim,” he exhales, speaking the kid’s Christian name for the first time since they’ve met. “You know, you don’t have to keep sailing.”  
  
“There’s no life for me on firm land,” Kirk insists so devoutly that McCoy can believe that he believes that absolutely and that he’s never even considered anything else as truth. “The sea and my ship. She gives me what I need.”  
  
“A lonely life,” McCoy sums up.  
  
Kirk seems to consider those words for a long moment and turns a sad smile on McCoy. “Bones,” he exhales, like he’s sympathetic that McCoy doesn’t understand, like he’s reigning in his condescension. “I’ve been lonely a lot longer than the time you’ve known me. What makes you think that’s going to change?” He rests his hand on the bed, mere inches from McCoy’s thigh and when McCoy shifts his body to lessen the pain, he may push his leg up against Kirk’s fingers. “Gaila keeps me company.”  
  
“Gaila’s mind is riddled with insecurities of her own,” McCoy sharply snaps. “Pushing your problems on that poor girl is...”  
  
“Why, Bones, do you like my cook?” Kirk interrupts with a sly grin on his face.  
  
“I respect the girl. I like...” he spits out without thinking, cutting himself off and shaking his head. “I like solid ground and the sky being clear. I like curing diseases and not sawing off limbs because infection has pushed too far into the bloodstream to save the poor sap. I like not seeing three cases of scurvy in a month and not dealing with goddamn pirates...” He might have rambled on longer if Kirk hadn’t leaned in and pressed his lips to McCoy’s in a fierce and biting kiss, Kirk’s stubble scratching and marking up McCoy’s not-so-clean cheek.  
  
Kirk tastes of red wine, cinnamon, and salt. His teeth are insistent as they bite and tug on McCoy’s lower lip and Kirk wastes no time before grabbing hold of McCoy’s cravat to haul himself in closer, always careful to avoid the gunshot wound. After a thorough exploration and conquest of his mouth, Kirk eases back and looks at McCoy expectantly.   
  
“Bones,” Kirk says, every consonant and syllable of the nickname being tried out on Kirk’s moist pink lips. “Go home, then.”  
  
“I can’t,” McCoy admits and knows that he sounds hopeless, but that choice was made for him when he helped his father slide off the mortal coil and when Jocelyn chose a man who could be a husband to her and not just a doctor for the sake of a reputation with the town.  
  
“Then find a new home,” Kirk says with all the trappings of sense and sympathy in those words. He pushes at the linens with his feet and splays out beside McCoy, his body arranges in a clumsy arrangement of limbs, staring up at McCoy from the bed. “Mine doesn’t obey the rules of the law. Mine has enough to keep a surgeon like you busy.”  
  
“Your ship is filled with pirates,” McCoy patiently reminds Kirk.   
  
“And me.” As if Kirk doesn’t belong with them, as if he’s an outlier and an exception. As if he’s enough. He offers a hapless smile and shrugs. “We need a surgeon,” he points out. “I heard Korby and Chapel are on their way to Ireland to look for treasure, so she’s not coming back and after watching you...I could do worse.”  
  
“You could do worse,” McCoy echoes with a heavy harrumph of indignation. He presses his hand lightly against his hip and exhales deeply as he tries to put his thoughts and his life in order. He hasn’t told Kirk a hell of a lot about him, about his father or his divorce or his daughter. Part of him wants to withhold this information just in case.   
  
He could back to Pike and take his deserved punishment, but he’d only been biding time on that ship as he counted down days until it’s all over.   
  
“What’s to incite me to stay?” McCoy finally asks wearily.  
  
“I told you. I’m on this ship,” Kirk says matter-of-factly and with just a glimmer of mischief lingering at the corners of his lips. “It might not be any kind of home that you’re expecting or dreaming of, but I can try.”  
  
“Pirates...”  
  
“Free-thinking citizens,” Kirk corrects and leans forward with a devious smirk. “Is how I like to see it.” He claims a swift and brief kiss before easing back. “And my people won’t hang us just for that. Trust me, Bones,” he insists, full of passion and determination. “Just trust me.”  
  
A poisoner, once a murderer, occasionally a terrible husband and father and here he lies, as if deserving of throwing stones against a glass house. “Trust you,” he lets out the words with quiet derision and suspicion. “You do know how that sounds.”  
  
“I’m sure you’ve done worse.”  
  
And Kirk doesn’t know the half of it, but maybe over time, McCoy will find some kind of comfort for his soul. Maybe he’ll tell Kirk. And maybe he’ll keep sailing the seas and patching up other men to try and pay his penance. He could do that aboard the  _Riverside_. He could. It’s only a question of whether he  _will_.  
  
“Bones?” Kirk wonders, tapping lightly at his forehead with two fingers. “Are you still in there?”  
  
Somewhere, deep inside, Leonard McCoy, the undamaged and untainted man  _is_  there. It’s just been a long journey trying to get back to him.   
  
“I’ve done worse things,” McCoy finally decides aloud. “And you need a surgeon. We’ll see. We’ll see how it goes.”  
  
*  
  
The letter arrives in the Bahamas and it’s not until they’re two days back at sea that McCoy opens it up. It’s taken him two days to accept that just because Pike has stamped the wax with his seal, it doesn’t mean it’s haunted by the Captain. And really, what harm can one small letter do? It’s not thick enough to have anything too harmful in it (though he hasn’t ruled out the notion of the letter being lined with gunpowder and has given the crew express orders not to light a single damn flare around it).  
  
“Stop staring and open it,” Kirk had huffed at breakfast that morning when McCoy had ignored grapefruit and bread to stare at the letter instead. “Or I’ll kidnap another surgeon who pays attention to me more than the mail...” He hadn’t gotten much further before McCoy kicks him in the shin and uses the silence to lean forward and steal a kiss from Kirk to quiet his worries.  
  
McCoy takes the brief respite from Kirk’s yammering to pry the seal open and study the short letter contained there within:  
  
 _Sawbones:  
  
A  **pirate**? Are you out of your mind? Don’t answer that. I’m not sure I want to think of a medical genius like you going insane. Chekov and Scotty told me what you did and don’t think I won’t cut you into ribbons the next time I see you. And I best see you again. Really, Sawbones. Piracy? I know you were low on options, but this one really beats the rest.  
  
Don’t think I’ll be lenient when we catch up and we  **will**  catch up.  
  
Give Captain Kirk my regards. And tell him that the next time the Riverside is in sight, I won’t dally. And remember, you were my surgeon first.  
  
Yours,  
  
Captain Pike  
  
Postscript: You owe me a uniform. I’ll collect the next we meet._  
  
McCoy smirks ruefully as he folds up the thick parchment and slides the letter into his front pocket.   
  
“Well?” Kirk asks when he looks up and sees that McCoy’s attention is no longer occupied. “What does it say?”  
  
“It goes along the lines of, he looks forward to meeting you too,” McCoy summarizes, not mentioning who it’s from, the details in between the lines, or any of the private words that Pike’s sent in the letter. Kirk doesn’t seem to need any more than that and grins broadly and eagerly, like a boy given his first toy to play with. “That and he seems to wish to exercise his claim to my medical services.”  
  
“That,” Kirk announces, dark and joyful all at once, snatching the letter from McCoy’s pocket and smoothing it between his fingers before shredding it to pieces without a single glance at the carefully-penned cursive words, “is something he’ll have to fight me for.” The warmth of Kirk’s fingertips lingers at McCoy’s heart and he doesn’t miss the letter for a moment. He doesn’t miss the feel of land at all beneath his feet for the first time in years. He breathes in sea air and finds his sea legs right where he hasn’t been looking for them.


End file.
